[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com]
The Suits at VDARE.com won’t let me spell out the N-word in full. I understand the reasons for that and am totally on board with the policy. It’s irksome, though; it annoys me. [VDARE.com Suits: it annoys us too, but it’s because Tech Totalitarian corporate censorware would block us for using it].
Not because I dislike black people. There are many I like a lot. Here’s one: scholar of human language John McWhorter of Columbia University .Back in 2016 I noted a column Professor McWhorter had published at The Daily Beast under the title “Anti-Racism, Our Flawed New Religion.” Anti-racism is, he wrote, is “what we worship, as sincerely and fervently as many worship God and Jesus and, among most Blue State Americans, more so.”
But I think that a situation where one part of the citizenry is prohibited, on pain of career destruction, from uttering a word that the other part uses with perfect liberty, is unjust.
I don’t mind taboo words in themselves. Probably every organized society needs taboo words. A taboo word should be taboo to everybody, though. Otherwise you’re in one of those situations Sir James Frazer wrote about in The Golden Bough, one of those primitive societies where certain words can only be spoken by members of the ruling elite.
Well, here’s a couple of stories from the past few days that I’m going to put under the heading “N-word Watch.” I may make this a regular feature.
First story: Meet Kyle Larson, 27 years old, a race-car driver.
Larson was a rising star in NASCAR. Apparently—I didn’t know this, and I hope I’m getting it right—you don’t get to be a star driver in NASCAR unless you are employed by an organization that runs teams of drivers.
Larson was an employee of an outfit named Chip Ganassi Racing. He was doing so well, he was preparing to go free agent, so that Chip Ganassi would have to fight a bidding war with other outfits for Larson’s services. Pretty nice career spot to be in for a 27-year-old.
Last week, it all fell apart. Sunday night, wearing a headset for some kind of live-streamed virtual event, Larson lost communication with a colleague—a white guy, as it happens. Checking the mike, he said: “You can’t hear me, [N-word]?”
Except of course he didn’t say [N-word]. He said the actual taboo word.
It was a hot mike. Larson was suspended without pay by Ganassi early Monday, then suspended indefinitely by NASCAR. Then big sponsors—Chevrolet, McDonald’s, Credit One Bank—started pulling out, so Ganassi totally fired him. [Larson Fired After Sponsors Drop NASCAR Driver over Racial Slur, AP, April 14, 2020]
For using the N-word—with a white colleague.